One or more aspects relate to the field of virtual machines, and more specifically, to sharing a USB Key by multiple virtual machines located at different hosts.
A USB Key is a kind of hardware device used for authentication and with a USB interface, which has a built-in smart chip, and can store a secret key and a digital certificate of a user. By using a built-in cryptographic algorithm, the encryption and decryption, as well as digital signature and verification, can be carried out, so that the verification of the user's identity is realized, and the confidentiality and integrity of information, the authenticity of the identity, and the undeniability of the signature information are assured, thereby securing the security of the system application.
Virtual machines are widely used in large-scale economic organizations, such as banks, stock exchanges, insurance companies and the like. At present, it is possible to use a USB Key to authenticate that a host is a legal user to authorize it for use, or to authenticate that a virtual machine on the host is a legal user to authorize he/she for use.
In the prior art, one USB Key can only be used for one host, and only the virtual machines on the host can use the USB Key to carry out authentication while other hosts can not share the USB Key. In this way, multiple USB Keys are required to correspond to multiple hosts in the above application, causing the waste of the hardware cost.